NCAA Rankings: Road to the Final Four

I live in Kentucky…the Northern part, just south of Ohio.Even though I’m 15 miles from the University
of Cincinnati and 16 miles from Xavier University, we learned at an early age
to root for the Kentucky Wildcats (70 miles away).I love Kentucky basketball (who, as of me
writing this, are ranked number 4 in the nation and just demolished the #1 Tennessee
Volunteers) and watch most of their games (but I’m not one of THOSE fans).I enjoy the sport in general, I love watching
other teams play, and boy do I love tournament time.

Okay, let’s chat briefly about the NCAA Rankings viz.I’ve been using Tableau for about 12 months
and to be perfectly honest, I’ve never created a bump chart.I decided that I would like to do just that
and would need to find some data to utilize.Then one evening I was watching a UK game, saw the Top 25 ranking next to their
name, and thought that NCAA Rankings over time would make a perfect bump chart.

I created the bump chart pretty easily, after all it’s really just a line
chart with a dual axis to show a shape. However, when I looked at the results, I thought it was a bit confusing.There were 25 times for 12 weeks (at that
time) which meant it looked like a rainbow had thrown up.I decided to change it up a bit by using logos, team colors, and to allow
users to choose two teams to compare (while fading other teams to the background).The downloading and cleaning up of all the logos and matching of
team colors took forever...

I couldn't resist a little baseball movie humor.

When I was about 90% complete, I saw Jeff Plattner tweet out a very similar NCAA Rankings Viz.It was well done, was on a black background
like mine, and certainly looked similar.His was a very good viz and I admit, I was a bit bummed that he beat me
to the punch.However, they certainly
had their differences and I wasn't going to let it discourage me.

As I continued to finish up the last 10% of this viz, I decided to bail on
the straight lines and implement some nice, smooth curves...Sigmoid curves to be exact. Jeff Shaffer was the first person to utilize Sigmoid curves in Tableau. He used it to recreate a curvy slope chart, which he wrote about in two blog posts: A Graph Recreation in Tableau and the follow-up regarding How to Build it. Since then, Sigmoid curves have become a staple for Tableau developers. I used Jeff's techniques along with a Sigmoid Bump Chart
blog post from Rody Zachovich.
I also downloaded Matt Chambers’ Path to the Playoff viz.I then created the Sigmoid curves to connect
the dots…and boy did it make a world of difference.

I’ll soon be writing more about the Sigmoid Bump Chart, but for now, I present NCAA Basketball: Road to the Final Four.(And yes, I will be
updating this visualization through the end of the season).

As always, if you ever have any questions or comments, please feel free to
contact me at any time.